Wylie:Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag yang tshom zhus lan ma
Another Bundle, attributed to Machik Lapdrön, takes the form of a dialogue or question-and-answer session, perhaps written down or remembered in verse by her son Gyalwa Döndrup, who is said in several sources to be the interlocutor. In the catalog of The Treasury of Precious Instructions, Kongtrul traces his transmission lineage back to him. “Another” or “a further” bundle (yang tshom) indicates that it is another collection following The Great Bundle. In The Religious History of Pacification and Severance, Khamnyön Dharma Senge calls Another Bundle “the esoteric instructions on that [Great Bundle].”[1] An alternate title given in the colophon is Another Bundle of Twenty-Five Instructions as Answers to Questions, shortened in certain other sources to Another Bundle of Twenty-Five. However, one finds here twenty-eight questions, and it is not clear if this is some kind of alternate Tibetan way of counting or if the bundle tends to gain and lose questions with each reprint like a loose bunch of flowers.
This version of Another Bundle is also found in a collection of Severance texts called Practices of the Severance Collection and So Forth (gCod tshogs kyi lag len sogs) from Limi Monastery. Although there are many minor differences in these two editions, some of which I mention in the endnotes, the two are comparable in format. However, it is preceded in the Limi collection by another text that is indicated merely with the words “Bundle of Precepts” (bKa’ tshom). The colophon to that text calls it “Thirty-Five Questions and Answers on the Bundle of Precepts, the Quintessence of the Mother’s Super Secret Heart-Mind.” It goes on to add the following: “This esoteric instruction is a word continuum. If it spreads to everyone it will be of no benefit. Keep it restricted like a mute’s speech. Depend on the heirs that hold the lineage.” And: “This quintessence of the heart-mind [as] questions and answers was gladly bestowed by great realized guru[s] on the Shākya monk Sangdor, and I wrote it well.” This may be the same author as that of the Heart Essence of Profound Meaning, Jamyang Gönpo, who typically signs off as “the Shākya monk, holder of the vajra.”
Although this other “Bundle of Precepts” in the Limi collection bears almost no resemblance to The Great Bundle of Precepts (bKa’ tshom chen mo), it is strikingly similar to Another Bundle in that it is a series of questions and answers, many of which in fact are basically the same questions. Of the thirty-five questions (here correctly enumerated), twenty-six appear in Another Bundle, at least in content, with sometimes two questions being combined into one. Three of the responses to questions resemble sections in The Essential Bundle (chapter 9 in this volume), and six questions seem to be unique to this text, although parts of their answers can be found elsewhere. If this is an earlier or different “bundle,” it lends more sense to the title of the present text “Another Bundle,” since they are both in the same format of dialogue and may just represent two versions that were circulating in Tibet. Where Khamnyön Dharma Senge quotes Machik in The Religious History of Pacification and Severance, the wording is identical to the Limi “Bundle of Precepts” and not to The Great Bundle or Another Bundle in this collection. Since Khamnyön Dharma Senge was contemporary with Jamgön Kongtrul, this just indicates that both versions were available in the nineteenth century and does not confirm their relative dates. It seems likely that Machik’s teachings were remembered and later recorded in many versions that were constantly shifting and reforming during nearly a millennium of transmission.
Notes
- ↑ Khamnyön Dharma Senge, Religious History of Pacification and Severance, f. 68a.
- Translator's notes
- Note from Ringu Tulku
- The Pith Instructions on the Prajnaparamita Questions and Answers Called "Refined Oral Teachings".
- Notes on the text itself
- The first text is a yang tshom text, but the subsequent three are nying tshom. C.Nyima's report didn't list an author, Person:Ringu Tulku Contents of the gdams ngag mdzod, 1999. says the author is 'not mentioned?' but lists Machik as the author. Martin, D.. A Catalog of the Gdams-ngag Mdzod, 1993. includes notes that these are Machik's instructions, but only lists that after the fourth text.
- Other notes
- Genre from Richard Barron's Catalog
- Instruction manual
- Genre from dkar chag
- yan lag gi chos
- BDRC Link
- VolumeI1CZ3976
- BDRC Content Information
- No note on contents
Information about Unicode Tibetan and the digitization of this text
As the only available unicode Tibetan text at the time, Nitartha International's version of the Gdams ngag mdzod Paro Edition of the gdams ngag mdzod is provided here. However, note that it has not been thoroughly edited and that there may also be mistakes introduced through the conversion process. Eventually we will provide a fully edited version of the entire Shechen Edition, entered and edited multiple times by Pulahari Monastery in Nepal, but as of fall 2017 that project has not been finished. Note that the folio numbers that appear throughout were added by Nitartha Input Center at the time of input.
Provided by Nitartha International Document Input Center. Many thanks to Person:Namdak, Tenzin and Person:Wiener, G. for help with fonts and conversion.